VINELAND – It took almost a decade after college for Warren Crescenzo, a frustrated music major turned radio station program director, to find that his calling lay in helping others find their voices.

Retired from the city school system since 2007, Crescenzo continues as a private speech therapist and recently was re-certified by his professional association for another three years if he chooses.

At age 65, retirement versus working is a continuing conversation topic for the Vineland native.

Meanwhile, music is back in his life though as a hobby rather than a career. He plays trumpet and sings with Cumberland County College groups.

In a way, the pronounced career turns as a younger man make a certain amount of sense.

“The funny thing is, looking back at all of this, there was sort of a common thread of things that sort of blended together,” Crescenzo said. “One was music. One was communication. One was the willingness to help others. I don’t want to sound like I’m polishing my badge here. Looking back after so many years, I realize how all these things sort of came together with working in education.”

This October, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association issued him an Award for Continuing Education — a recognition that a therapist has put in at least 70 hours of study over no more than three years. It is the 10th ACE for Crescenzo since his first one in 1988.

Relying on a speech therapy certificate he obtained in 1972, he landed a part-time job in a Newfield elementary school — even while working full-time at a radio station — as what then was called a “speech correctionist.”

Crescenzo said that, in his earliest days as a therapist, the job primarily was dealing with sounds and fluency. It was a narrow responsibility compared to the field as it is today, he said.

After two years at Glassboro State College — now Rowan University — Crescenzo switched his major from music to speech and drama along with a minor in English. He graduated in 1971. He also started working part-time in the college radio station and then an outside station while still a student.

A 1967 graduate of Vineland High School, Crescenzo played trumpet in the school band and sang with the chorus. It was as a voice major that he went off to college.

“People remark about my voice — they don’t say so much about my trumpet,” he laughed. “Trouble is, when I went to college, I had these bright ideas but I wasn’t mature. I wasn’t prepared and I didn’t have the proper training. It was a disaster.”

The abortive musical career left scars that took decades to overcome, but also left him with some skills that now come into play as a therapist including an ear for sounds.

“That’s one of the benefits of music education,” Crescenzo said. “And one of the things that concerns me when I start seeing boards of education trying to tear those programs away. Because there is so much involved with memory, critical listening, the fact that you’re trying to stay on a task for an extended period.”

Crescenzo’s therapy career stayed a part-time one for years. As a full-time occupation, it actually started shortly after Crescenzo quit a radio station programming director job in 1978.

He quit without another job waiting but he quickly found himself in a temporary position in Downe Township public schools, which led to a permanent position with Vineland public schools in 1979.

Crescenzo picked up a master’s degree in speech language pathology from Trenton State College in the early 1983.

Speech therapy has evolved significantly since the 1970s, from its scope of concerns, to necessary credentials, to the scourge of bureaucracy.

Besides working on a child’s stuttering problem, a therapist also will end up working with stroke and accident victims. Problems with swallowing also is a part of the specialty, with victims ranging from newborns to senior citizens. A school setting also may entail working with students whose problems start with not being native English speakers.

“I would say, looking at this honestly, the first 10 years of the position I thought it was the best job in the world,” Crescenzo said. “The last several, things got so complicated. It’s the same thing that’s happening with government intervention in all kinds of things, where paperwork became more important than people. There is just so much to be done now.

“If you want to enroll Little Johnny for an ‘s’ sound, it is more difficult to do because you have justify that there would be a ‘social’ or ‘emotional’ or ‘academic’ problem by not correcting that sound,” he said, “You have to go through a whole bunch of meetings, paperwork gets passed around and signed. And now the same thing is happening with medicine, because we are part medicine, part education.”

Crecenzo’s solo practice is what he calls “cradle to grave.”

“My youngest patient was in a hospital 4 days old, and that was a swallowing issue,” he said. “And my oldest one was 109. That was also a swallowing issue at the time.”

In addition, he works in Vineland at a state Division of Children and Families-run school on West Sherman Avenue and also at Cumberland Regional High School.

“And a lot of what we do now in schools is sort of literacy based,” Crescenzo said. “I’m amazed by what kids know today. But I’m also amazed by what they don’t know.”

Crescenzo said the most important thing with children is getting their confidence that the therapist is there to help. The best way to do that is to politely talk with them, he said.

“I say, ‘I’m here to help you so that when you go back to class you don’t have to be worried about being laughed at,” he said. “I’m not going to laugh at you.’”